


Kiss Me, Maybe. Kiss Me?

by LittleWonderly



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Boys Are Dumb, Fluff, M/M, No Communication, Valentines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22701172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleWonderly/pseuds/LittleWonderly
Summary: Their clearing, as he had begun to think of it so many months ago. The perfect combination of hidden in the edges of the forest but open on one side to the slow flow of the lake. The summer heat was dulled but the light still cast reflective shimmers and illuminated the small void.It made everything look almost unreal. It made Kevin look unreal.
Relationships: Kevin Day/Neil Josten
Comments: 14
Kudos: 112
Collections: AFTG Exchange Valentine's Day 2020





	Kiss Me, Maybe. Kiss Me?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unsealie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsealie/gifts).



> Written as a part for the AFTG Valentines Exchange as a gift for sonofaexy on tumblr. They asked for either 'flower shop au, Hogwarts au, road trip au.' I went with the Hogwarts au and I really hope you like it! It was fun to write :)

The thing with it was, it wasn’t like Neil couldn’t notice that Valentines was a massive deal for other people. The entirety of Hogwarts had so much pink and red thrown over it you’d think they’d added another house. No fewer than three explosions of confetti were sitting in his hair and Nicky had taken it as his personal mission to cover as many classrooms as possible with singing banners and, somehow, convince all the school ghosts to loudly bellow love songs at top volume any time a student walked past. 

He understood the basic concept. He had just never really cared before. He still didn’t really care now. The whole spectacle was nauseating and trite, created just to make couples insufferable and singles feel like outcasts. The closest he had come to the holiday while on the run was glimpses of chocolate and red roses at the cheap gas stations he and his mother filled up at. It was pointless to assign so much romantic meaning to just one day of the year but...but Neil was still walking down halls that resembled a muggle tunnel of love ride with a carefully wrapped gift tucked under his arm. 

No, he didn’t care about Valentine’s day, but he cared a great deal about Kevin Day. 

There wasn’t a box that Neil could put Kevin in that really fit. He had never been his best friend, that new and still unfamiliar role has been tentatively assigned to Andrew, but Kevin was the person he most wanted to run to whenever anything went wrong. He had never been just a classmate, couldn’t be with all the shared history they had together, even if Kevin had only recently become aware of it. Boyfriend seemed too little. It was a recent word, thrown at him across the table in the Great Hall over breakfast when he’d confided in his friends that he and Kevin had kissed. It was accurate, he guessed, but it didn’t feel like enough. 

Was there a better word for someone who was saving you with every second they let you carry on existing? For someone who looked at you and everything you had been and still decided that who you were now was worth risking? 

Kevin was a part of Neil on a fundamental level, one of the few people who had glimpsed the world Neil had come from and didn’t see a monster; who just saw Neil. 

Boyfriend didn’t fit, but Neil wanted to keep being his all the same. He wanted it enough that he’d been kept awake for four nights now worrying whether Kevin cared about Valentines, whether he was expecting for Neil to make a sort of romantic gesture. Neil didn’t know how to make romantic gestures, hadn’t thought himself capable of even feeling something romantic for another person until Kevin had wormed his way under Neils defenses. 

From late-night practices that left Neils body aching to lunch breaks spent practicing spell after spell. From conversations had in the glow of a single candle to spilling truths he had never shared with anyone. Moments without Kevin had rapidly begun to feel like moments wasted. 

Andrew had called him an idiot which while not a new opinion, had still made Neil pout over their shared stolen goods from the kitchen. It was debatable if you could call goods stolen if the house elves all but tripped over themselves to give Andrew free sweets but it made the other man feel better to pretend. 

The thing was, Neil wanted Kevin to feel as lucky to have Neil as Neil was to have him but what could Neil really offer? A gruesome history that had caught up with him so violently the evidence of it was all over his skin? A future of constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure the last of his ghosts hadn’t found their way back to him? A potentially never to be discovered interest in most physical types of intimacy? 

Kevin had never mentioned anything about all the things Neil didn’t know if he’d ever be able to do but the worry still sat heavily in the back of Neils mind. Demisexual was another new word for him, a label that didn’t always fit comfortably but was the closest he could come right now to quantifying how he felt. It was Aaron who had offered it to him, tucked away in the back of the library when they should have been studying. 

The sun was just starting to reach its peak when Neil jogged down the steps to the long-reaching grounds, sidestepping a group of excited first-year Slytherins as they chased an enchanted Cupid past him. The light, almost musical quality to their laughter was such a sharp contrast to all the screams that still haunted his nights but it was welcome; the simple joy of it helping to remind him that not everything was dark. 

Not everything, like the diamond sheen of the lake as he rounded the curve of it, the deep blue that shifted into patches of endless black as the giant squid warmed its back. Not everything like the cheerful call of his name as he passed Matt, beaming with his robes abandoned into a makeshift blanket on the ground, Dan nestled into his side as Renee showed off a colour charm on her hair. 

He raised his hand in a greeting and smiled in a way that tugged at his still-healing wounds. The discomfort was worth the feeling in his chest, the evergrowing spread of warmth.

That feeling only intensified when he drew away from the energy of the main grounds, as he followed the trailing edge of the lake and felt the air cool as trees cast their long shadows; when he ducked under one low branch as climbed over wild roots to a small clearing. 

Their clearing, as he had begun to think of it so many months ago. The perfect combination of hidden in the edges of the forest but open on one side to the slow flow of the lake. The summer heat was dulled but the light still cast reflective shimmers and illuminated the small void. 

It made everything look almost unreal. It made Kevin look unreal. 

Kevin, leaning up against a tree with his long legs stretched out in front of him, sleeves rolled up his arms and his collar unbuttoned in a way he so rarely looked. Less polished and softer, more open. He was a picture of glowing skin and soft brow, face relaxed and lips parted, hair as dark as the creeping shadows but vulnerable in the way little strands brushed his forehead in the breeze.

He was bent forward slightly over the book in his lap, concentrated but for once not devouring. A read for pleasure instead of study. This was his Kevin, the Kevin other people didn’t often get to see. The Kevin that he had grown to know and appreciate in the stolen hours they’d spent in this very clearing. 

The Kevin that had very nearly cracked and splintered irreparably under the strain of trying to bare his demons but had raged in an entirely different way when presented with Neil’s. The Kevin that had taken Neil’s hand in his own and promised he would train him every day so maybe Neil would be strong enough to survive his past. 

There was no part of Neil’s future that he didn’t owe to him and his unshakeable belief that Neil could and would always be more than he thought possible. There wasn’t a part of Neil’s future that he didn’t fervently want Kevin to be a part of. 

He just hoped the reverse was true, hoped so much that he was stood a few feet away from the man he had kissed under this very tree with a gift hidden under one arm. As if he could do what, buy Kevin’s continued affection? It was an absurd and insulting notion but the fear-driven urge to prove he could act and perform like a real boy had become an itch he couldn’t get rid of. 

It took no effort at all to remember that moment, only a scant few days ago but already feeling like a fundamental and formative part of Neil’s story. He could remember how it had been cloudier then and colder, how the trees had shaken above them as they had stood so close but with so much between them. 

No longer secrets for all of Neil’s were out in the open and blazoned across his skin. Just words they couldn’t say and thoughts they couldn’t force into order. Just a fear in their chests and the pulsing urge in their hands to reach out, to grip and hold and protect. 

He could remember the feel of Kevin’s fingers as they took his face like he was breakable, the small calluses from playing Quidditch and the almost reverent way he had skimmed over Neils injuries. Kissing Kevin wasn’t like anything he could have imagined. How could it be? When Kevin was a walking contradiction. Harsh and unyielding in most aspects of his life, focussed and passionate even when it bordered on obsession. He wasn’t the type to conceal his opinions or disappointments. 

When he had pressed his lips against Neils though it had felt as delicate as spun sugar. 

Neil had gasped and Kevin had whined in the back of his throat, something desperate and pleading. He had trembled when Neil curled both hands into the front of his sweater even as his knuckles screamed, ruined and raw. He hadn’t known how much he had wanted exactly this until it was happening, until Kevin was a warm presence with him in the eye of a storm that had threatened to fell them both. 

He was Neil’s lighthouse, ever guiding him somewhere over spilling with brightness. 

“Neil?” 

Neil startled and only noticed he had been staring silently at Kevin when the man spoke, voice curling in confusion. He knew the exact way his brows would be pulled together before he even made eye contact. 

He opened his mouth to speak but stalled with his lips barely parted. What was he supposed to say? Happy Valentines? It would surely sound as foreign and frightening as it felt, like a parrot pretending it knew the meaning of the words it was mimicking. 

Confusion quickly morphed into worry and Kevin closed his book slowly, eyes flitting all over Neil in the same way he had done the first time they had been reunited after Neil’s father had almost broken him beyond repair. He was looking for new damage, new danger and he was half raising from the ground before Neil hurriedly walked the last steps to him. 

“I’m okay.” He assured as he knelt down next to the man, knees pressing into the side of Kevin’s legs. 

“I got you something.”

The rapidly descending blanket of fear that had been filling Kevin’s expression wavered into uncertainty and back to confusion. His hand reached out and rested on Neil’s knee, the scars on the back of his hand white against his tan. It always did something to Neil, to see the evidence of their shared abuse side by side. It made him feel proud. Proud of Kevin and what he had endured and proud of them for continuing to endure. 

“What is it?” Kevin asked as Neil held up the package between them. 

His eyes caught on the roughly tied ribbon keeping it all together, the deep blue and the rich red. The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile before he gently ran a fingertip over the point the two colours met. He always seemed to stare at their colours together, like he enjoyed seeing sights such as Neil swamped in his robes just to stare at the contrast of their uniforms. When he started pulling apart the packaging Neil was struck with the urge to tear it away from him, to throw it in the lake and pretend it had never existed. 

“Wait--” He found himself breathing but Kevin’s eyes were going wide and he was leaning up onto his own knees in a quick scramble.

“How did you get this?” He asked almost on a whisper, something close to awe before his eyes flicked up to meet Neil’s frozen ones. His expression quickly changed into disbelief. 

“Did you _steal_ this?” He baulked and it was so incredulous, so appalled and so very much Kevin like that Neil could do nothing but let a laugh bubble up his chest. Law-abiding Kevin who’d never broken a rule in his life until coming to Hogwarts and meeting Andrew, who’d never cared less about ignoring what was right and wrong until meeting Neil. 

“I can take it back if you want.” Neil teased, not quite levelled but with a pearl worth of weight melting from his shoulders. 

“No!” Kevin exclaimed, clutching the book in his hands to his chest in a way that was both reverent and earnest. “Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get them to let me check this out?”

“You’ve been very vocal about it, yes.”

“I can’t believe you,” Kevin scoffed, raising the book till it was almost touching his face. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’d be in if you got caught in the restricted section? How on earth did you manage that on your own?” 

His sentence ended with him lowering the book slowly, looking at Neil over the rim with eyes that were already squinted suspiciously. 

“Don’t bother,” He tutted. “Andrew.” 

Neil pretended to pout. “I did most of the work. He just stood watch.”

“Guard dog,” Kevin muttered, laying the book to the side with such softness. “But why?” He asked with returning confusion and Neil felt at once all again nervous and unsure. 

The words continued to stick in his throat and refused to come out. Was it like this for everyone? Did all _couples_ feel constantly on unsteady ground and on the back foot? As if one wrong action or word could bring everything toppling down? Was it just him and the fucked up way he had been raised, if you could call what happened to him anything as mundane as that. 

His fingers wound their way into the hems of his sleeves, worrying the frayed fabric with rough fingers. It had become a habit he hadn’t noticed forming but was born from the energy his body flooded him with when the urge to run came. He had made a promise though, to Wymack and the school, to Andrew and the rest of their team; to Kevin. He would stop running. 

“Hey,” Kevin said softly, fingertips resting lightly on the back of Neil’s hand. “What’s wrong? Has something happened?” 

Neil shook his head mutely, looking away and out over the rippling water of the lake. This really was one of his favourite spots to be outside of the Quidditch pitch. 

“Neil. You’re worrying me. Is it your Uncle? Did you hear back from him? I swear, if he’s still on about taking you away we won’t let him. I’ll tell Dad and we’ll do something okay? He can’t have--”

“Kev.” Neil breathed when Kevin’s voice only grew and grew with fear. He closed his eyes even as he turned his head back round to the man’s, unable to look at him as his heart threatened to pound out of his chest. Why was he so afraid? 

“You can talk to me, you know you can. I just want you to be o--”

Words were out of his mouth and cutting off Kevin before he could stop them, his anxiety bursting through his common sense. 

“If you don’t like kissing me we don’t have to do it again!” 

There was a sharp intake of breath and Kevin’s fingers flinched away from Neil’s hands. 

“We don’t have to date at all, if you changed your mind. I’d understand.” And he would understand.

His mind was flung back into the tornado of uncertainty that had been raging ever since they had parted after that first kiss. The deep-seated anxiety that had followed his steps around the castle and kept him from sleep. The looming notion of a Valentine had been a part of it all but it had been a distraction, a conveniently timed event and attempt to ignore what really unsettled him. 

Kevin had kissed him like Neil was something precious but...but he hadn’t done it since. 

It was an incident isolated and there was a craving in Neil’s belly he hadn’t felt before. His skin crawled with the want to feel wanted again, to have Kevin treat him like the fragile glass he surely wasn’t. The dawn of the day after their kiss had come and gone without a repeat though.

They had blushed their way through breakfast and by dinner they were bickering as they were prone to do, words undercut with an affection their friends often found hard to understand. Neil had thought, maybe, as they walked the halls up till the point their routes needed to part, that Kevin would reach for him again. 

He hadn’t. He continued to not as one day turned into two, turned into knots in Neil’s stomach and the worry he had already ruined everything before it had even really started. 

“I’m sorry,” Neil said weakly and it didn’t matter which of the numeral things he could be apologizing for. It all ended him at the same point, uncharacteristically ashamed of the parts of being that he still did not understand. 

He was crawling from his knees and on his feet before Kevin unfroze, reaching out and grabbing his wrist in a grip that had caught dozens of Snitches with skilful ease. His fingers were tight over Neils pulse point and his eyes immediately screwed closed tighter at the sensation. What had happened to the runaway who didn’t need anyone?

When Kevin spoke it was softer than Neil might have expected and cracked raw down the centre. 

“Neil, _wait._ ”

There was so little that Neil wouldn’t do for this man that he obeyed. 

“Talk to me,” Kevin pleaded, climbing to his own feet and steering himself round in front of Neil. He didn’t let go of Neil’s wrist, his grip only seeming to tighten when he caught sight of Neil’s face. 

“Hey, look at me, what’s going on?” Kevin asked and Neil knew his eyes would be sitting heavy on his face, mouth turned down in the way it always did when he felt a step behind. 

“I don’t,” Kevin hesitated over his words, a frustrated noise blowing warm over Neil’s face when he exhaled. 

“I don’t why you would say something like that. Of _course,_ I want to date you. Of course, I still want to kiss you. Neil, every time I see you I just want…” His trailed off into another sigh, more pained and loaded between them. 

Neil’s other wrist was taken lightly and then Kevin’s fingers, long and rough but brilliant in the way they could play, were guiding Neil until both his hands were caught up against Kevin’s chest. 

“Please, open your eyes.” 

Neil didn’t want to. He did anyway, a dangerous and fluttering hope spilling into his chest when he met the bright green of Kevin’s and the sheer openness inside of them. 

“I’m sorry,” Kevin said and he sounded so miserable that Neil felt a stab in his heart more painful than anything his father had ever done to him. 

“No, I am, I don’t know,” Neil tried to pull his hands away but Kevin held on to them tightly. “I don’t know how to do this and I'm screwing it up.” 

“You aren’t doing anything!” Kevin argued and his voice pitched the slightest bit louder, a frustration different than the type Neil saw on the field morphing his face. 

“It’s me, I thought I was doing the right thing but now you’re upset and it’s my fault.” 

Neil shook his head, stomach feeling like it was filled with rocks. 

“You haven’t--”

“No, I haven’t,” Kevin cut in and he was standing so close to Neil already, his body radiating the collected warmth of the afternoon sun but he stepped closer still, the sheer height of him making Neil feel caught but never, ever trapped. 

“I haven’t done _anything_ since that day because I thought I was respecting your boundaries and giving you space. I didn’t want to assume just because we did it once that you’d...I know it’s different for you and all I could think about was crossing a line.” 

One of Neil’s hands was released before Kevin was fumbling to place his palm against the curving lines of the cuts on his cheek. 

“Of course I want to kiss you.” He whispered in a voice so gentle the wind could have gripped it and blown it away. “All I've wanted to do is kiss you again. How couldn’t I? When you’re you and everything, absolutely _everything_.” 

It was like drowning in water and taking the first breath of air all at the same time, the all-consuming relief that snapped up Neil’s spine and the sheer weight of Kevin’s words worming under his skin. He felt stupid for all the fears that had been pacing hungrily at his heels and desperate for the balming release Kevin’s words gave him. 

“Kev,” He tried and found his voice thick. 

Kevin’s other hand came up to cup the opposite cheek, holding Neil between them like the most hard-earned and desired prize. 

“I want you, Neil Josten, no matter what shape that takes.” He leaned forward slowly, so slowly that Neil could count every dark eyelash that he had as it fluttered against the soft skin of his cheek. 

His own eyes slid closed as Kevin pressed a gentle kiss to the skin of his forehead, the tip of his nose, the high peak of his cheek. It was shattering and it was healing, it was being pulled apart and stitched together all at the same time. It was Kevin, it was always Kevin and this larger than life cluster of emotion that he somehow drew out of Neil. It left Neil trembling all the way to his bones, desperate in a way he didn’t think could ever be fulfilled. 

“You can kiss me,” Kevin ghosted over the skin of his face and when Neil’s eyes blinked open he could see colour starting to flush across Kevin’s cheeks. 

“You’re allowed.” He promised and it sounded so simple, _why_ hadn’t it seemed simple before? It was two words given to Neil so easily but they had never come to him alone, that this might be something he could grip for himself. He felt all at once selfish with the knowledge that his own hesitation and confusion had hurt them both. 

“I don’t _expect_ you to, but you can,“ Kevin rushed to say, thumbs rubbing Neils face gently as their gazes seemed to burn the air between them. 

“I want to,” Neil said and it was the strongest he had felt all day, the surest he had felt since entering this clearing and finding his home in human form. Kevin’s smile was like the rising sun pushing away the dark of night and Neil felt himself almost sway with it. 

“But,”

Kevin’s hands slipped down to cup around his neck. 

“If you don’t want to now, tomorrow, the next week, month or year, then we won’t.” He said it like it was that simple, like no other option had ever even entered his mind and Neil; Neil was ashamed that he had doubted that, doubted that Kevin would be in this any different than he was with Neil in anything. 

He didn’t do things to punish Neil. He had a heart larger than anyone gave him credit for and a protective streak that had been slowly allowed to rage away from the bindings of his adoptive family. Andrew called them both idiots and he was, as he so infuriatingly had the habit of being, right. 

“I got you something too,” Kevin said, shuffling on his feet and reluctantly letting go of Neil to bend over his bag. When he straightened he was holding a small parcel in his palm and Neil couldn’t help but smile at the multicoloured twine holding what looked like parchment paper closed. Red and blue. 

“You didn’t have to,” Neil said, taking the small gift. 

Kevin shrugged and his eyes flicked fondly to the book still nestled in the grass. 

“Neither did you.” 

Neil wondered if this was how Kevin had felt in the exact moment Neil had handed him his gift. As of his heart was going to pound out of his chest even as warmth wrapped around it. In all the time Neil had been worrying whether this was something Kevin expected, was Kevin wondering the same thing too? All the insecurities and uncertainties that Neil was collecting; were they a matched set, not an apparent lick of sense between them?

“Its,” Neil frowned as he undid the paper, the sides folding open to reveal a deep green stone, dented on one edge like the imprint of a thumb and shimmering seemingly from the inside with the faintest of silver light. 

“It’s a Odorum Stone.” Kevin finished for him. 

Neil looked up to meet his eyes quizzically. “I don’t know what that is.” 

A familiar flick of suffering came over Kevins face as he rolled his eyes seemingly out of habit. 

“You need to stop letting Matt distract you in class. Professor Beatricus told us about them at the start of term--”

“Kevin.” Neil reached out a grabbed his hand, a fond, almost delirious happiness taking over him as Kevin immediately stopped, blushing shyly. It didn’t matter how many of their classmates found Kevin obnoxious, how many of their friends would bemoan the lectures, how in the past Neil himself had found Kevin’s perfectionist streak irritating. How much Kevin cared even about the smallest of things was a trait Neil had come to find endearing. 

“What does it do?” He asked eagerly. 

“Squeeze it,” Kevin said as his gripped pulsed once in Neil’s hand. 

It was like parchment paper and ink, the scent that immediately filled the air around them. It was the smell the sun made when it warmed wood and it was the crystal clear spray of water moving in the breeze. It was leather and vanilla and something like green leaves just before they turned gold. It was Kevin’s favourite pineapple cake and it was the smell of the shampoo he used. 

“When you were in the hospital wing, when I had to leave to talk to my Dad, Andrew said you were having nightmares. He said he couldn’t get you to calm down but you’d reached for the cloak I’d left behind and the second you’d gotten it you’d just stopped.” Kevin’s eyes were like soft moss as he swallowed hard. 

“He said you slept with it so close like you were breathing in it.”

Neil didn’t remember reaching for it but he remembered waking the next morning, the cloak tucked under his cheek and the scent of Kevin surrounding him, his hand gripped tightly by Kevin sleeping fitfully in the chair next to him. 

He liked wearing Kevins cloak. He liked how large it was on him and the way it left him feeling protected. He liked the way Kevin always got ink on the sleeves of his jumpers and the way he could tell the exact days that Kevin had spent longer in the shower, the days he let himself linger in the warm water and douse himself in the things that made him feel better. 

“You always steal my clothes.” Kevin echoed his thoughts. “I don’t know if it really helps but I thought you could keep that, so if I’m not around you can squeeze it and a part of me would be with you.”

It made Neils book pale in comparison but there was no jealousy to be found as he felt his throat tick with something overwhelming. 

“Kevin,” He gripped the stone so hard he hoped it left indents for days, weeks, months; made a permanent impression into his skin so he never had to let it go. 

“Can I kiss you?” 

Kevin’s breath hitched even as a smile as miraculous as a sunset came over him. He’s beautiful, Neil thought, he’s beautiful and he’s mine and I’m his. 

“Yeah Neil,” Kevin stepped closer and closed his other hand over the stone, enclosing it between them like a secret, like a promise. “Yes.” 


End file.
